RICHARD HAWLEY - HAWLEY'S LONGPIGS NIGHTMARE

HAWLEY'S LONGPIGS NIGHTMARE

Mercury Music Prize nominee RICHARD HAWLEY missed out on his baby daughter's first steps during a troubled stint with British band THE LONGPIGS, because he was rushed off on a nine-month tour just hours after she was born. The British singer/songwriter played guitar with the rockers during their 1990s heyday but, due to "terrible management" and spiralling drug abuse, the period badly affected his family life and personal wellbeing. The pinnacle of the nightmare came when the manager of the band turned up at the hospital just after the birth of his first child, and dragged him off for a gruelling tour. He says, "By the time I came back she was practically walking. "Looking back, everything that could have gone wrong went wrong with that band. It was a combination of terrible management decisions and drugs. "Nothing good ever came out of cocaine. I made some dreadful mistakes. I recently read that FRANK ZAPPA told his son that drugs were just an excuse that people use to behave like a**seholes, and that sums it up for me."